Welcome to Tuesday’s live blog, with Jack Sexty, Simon MacMichael and the rest of the team.
Live blog: Adam Yates misses Tirreno-Adriatico win by less than a second, Ineos accused of “greenwashing” over Team Sky deal, Bike shop assistant ‘mansplains’ clipless pedals to Olympic cyclist + more
All today’s news from the site and beyond…
Tue, Mar 19, 2019 16:48
SUMMARY
19 March 2019, 16:48
Serious crash in Northolt, Ealing as cyclist and car involved in collision
Live Northolt updates as air ambulance lands after serious crash closes roadhttps://t.co/y0HNcYLA7L
— Ealing Gazette (@EalingGazette) March 18, 2019
The crash happened evening and the cyclist is believed to be in his 60’s. It’s been reported that the cyclist has possible life-threatening injuries, but there have been no further updates as to his condition this morning. No arrests have been made.
19 March 2019, 16:48
Yamaha launch the Wabash gravel e-bike
The Wabash is a ground-up design effort from Yamaha, and looks to be US-only at the moment. More on this later via eBikeTips.
19 March 2019, 16:48
10-year-old Ruby Isaac will ride the Stelvio in aid of World Bicycle Relief
You may recognise Ruby from various videos on social media in which we’ve seen her flipping panackes on rollers, shooting basketball hoops on rollers and just being generally impressive… well now she’s taking to the road to raise money for World Bicycle Relief. Ruby will ride the iconic Stelvio climb as part of the Granfondo Stelvio event on May 31st, and is aming to raise enough money to buy at least ten Buffalo bikes (durable steel bikes with lots of load-carrying ability) for people in some of the world’s poorest areas. Each bike costs around £95. If you want to donate, the JustGiving page link is here. You can also follow Ruby on Instagram to chart her progress and see more badass roller tricks.
19 March 2019, 16:48
CeramicSpeed launch SRAM DUB-compatible bottom bracket series for road and off-road, and you might have to save up...
If the price of the new SRAM AXS 12 speed groupset isn’t enough for you, luckily you can now accessorise it with CeramicSpeed’s £332 SRAM DUB-compatible bottom bracket. It’s built on a 28.99mm spindle which CeramicSpeed say allows for a more contamination-resistant design while retaining the efficiency the brand’s bearings are renowned for. There are also options for Italian threaded BB’s, which will please rich Pinarello owners. Head over to CeramicSpeed’s website for buying options after you’ve remortgaged.
19 March 2019, 16:48
Seeking the Grail? You'll have to wait a while...
Although you won’t have to cross the bridge of death or defeat a Black Knight by severing all his limbs to get to one, as we understand it you will have to hold on until at least summer to receive the new model of the Canyon Grail with a standard drop bar (the carbon model shown in our hilarious pic above has the ‘hoverbar’) in some sizes. off.road.cc reviewed the 105 version recently and you’re looking at mid-July to get one in size small or bigger, and the £1,449 SRAM Rival bike isn’t shipping until October in medium-sized frames. Good things come to those who wait and all that…
19 March 2019, 16:48
You know a climb's serious when...
#TirrenoAdriatico
Quando la salita è troppo ripida!!@brescio_ non deve essere sensazione piacevole addosso il peso di una moto. Come stai? pic.twitter.com/rXSgnTPf6v— CyclingTime (@Cyclingtimenews) March 18, 2019
We’re not totally sure if this was a mechanical or not at the Tirreno Adriatico that started the madness that eventually followed…
19 March 2019, 16:48
Shop assistant thinks he's offering helpful advice to woman on switching to clipless pedals... who happens to be an Olympian
Went to the bike shop to get new cage pedals for my commuter (have broken off enough chunks that they’re just spindles, so mostly used up) and Shop Dude said, “Clipless is better.”
1. I don’t actually think that’s always true for everyone, and
2. Thanks, buddy. I’ll check it out.— Mara Abbott (@cosunshinemka) March 18, 2019
We may have a tad bit of sympathy for the shop assistant who obviously wasn’t to know. As is evident from Mara Abbott’s further replies on the Twitter thread, he was taken down a peg or ten when she explained that she knew quite a bit about clipless pedals already…
“Hey, I need a new pair of pedals with cages”
“Well, first, clipless are better…”
“Thank you. I went to the Olympics for bike racing so I’ve got that and these are for my commuter.”— Mara Abbott (@cosunshinemka) March 18, 2019
19 March 2019, 16:48
“Planet wrecking” Ineos accused of “greenwashing” over Team Sky sponsorship
Ahead of today’s expected announcement that Ineos will sponsor Team Sky from next year, the petrochemicals business and its founder and controlling shareholder Sir Jim Ratcliffe have been accused of a “blatant attempt at greenwashing” by environmental campaigners.
At last year’s Tour de France, the team’s jerseys promoted the Sky Ocean Rescue campaign, which aims to clear plastic pollution from the seas, and when the broadcaster announced last December that it was ending its sponsorship after this season, one of the reasons given was that it wanted focus on that initiative.
In recent days as it has become clear that the Ineos deal is all but finalised, it hasn’t gone unnoticed on social media that the new sponsor, Britain’s biggest private company, is a major manufacturer of plastics.
Today, Tony Bosworth, fossil free campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “Taking over Team Sky is the latest blatant attempt at greenwashing by Ineos.
“It’s a harsh change of tone that may see Sky’s Ocean Rescue campaign to clear plastic pollution from our oceans ditched from the team jersey in favour of Ineos – one of the biggest plastic producers in Europe.
“This is also a company that wants to frack large swathes of northern England and the East Midlands. Ineos has also been lobbying hard for the government to relax safety rules so fracking companies can trigger larger earthquakes before having to down tools,” he added.
“Cycling is one the UK’s most successful and popular sports, but do the likes of Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome really want to be associated with a planet-wrecking company like Ineos?”
19 March 2019, 16:48
Now we know why...
On the invaluable comments section of the Bike Blog, a reader has a plausible answer to why Prof Robert Winston seems to dislike cyclists so much. pic.twitter.com/XpQPUtGYbT
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) March 18, 2019
The prof hasn’t exactly been glowing in his thoughts on cyclists as of late, calling for bike commuters to be taxed and insured – but if this comment from a Guardian thread is true, maybe he’s just really got a bee in his bonnet about this incident last year…
19 March 2019, 16:48
Royal Mail roll out e-trike pilot scheme
Selected postal workers across London, Cambridge and Birmingham were today supplied with specially-designed e-trikes with a huge load capacity to deliver their mail. More over on eBiketips.
19 March 2019, 16:48
Adam Yates misses out on Tirreno win by less than a second
Adam Yates has missed out on becoming the first British winner of Tirrreno-Adriatico by less than a second.
The Mitchelton-Scott rider, whose twin brother Simon won last year’s Vuelta, went into today’s closing individual time trial in San Benedetto del Tronto with a 25-second advantage over Jumbo-Visma’s Primoz Roglic.
The Slovenian former ski jumper, silver medallist in the time trial at the road world championships at Bergen in 2017, was widely tipped to overhaul the deficit today.
But he cut it fine, winning the week-long Italian race by just 0.31 of a second, with Yates finishing second overall and Astana’s Jakob Fuglsang half a minute back in third place.
Today’s stage was won by the Lotto-Soudal rider Victor Campenaerts the reigning European time trial champion.
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Jack is group editor across road.cc, off.road.cc and ebiketips, overseeing all three sites in the F-At Digital group to make sure everything’s up to scratch. He’s been writing about cycling and multisport for over a decade, arriving at road.cc via 220 Triathlon Magazine in 2017. He worked across all areas of road.cc including tech, news and video, and also contributed to ebiketips before being named editor of road.cc in 2021 (much to his surprise). Jack has been hooked on cycling since his student days, and currently has a Trek 1.2 for winter riding, a beloved Bickerton folding bike for getting around town, and an extra beloved custom Ridley Helium SLX for fantasising about going fast in his stable. Jack has never won a bike race, but does have a master’s degree in print journalism, and two Guinness World Records for pogo sticking (it’s a long story).
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Latest Comments
wtjs 16 minutes ago
@Sheen wheels I have a version of the R8100 and you definitively need ceramic for the socket Oh no, you don't! Ceramic sockets pretty rare and, as far as I know, only with ceramic and not metal 'ball' (femoral head)
mctrials23 49 minutes ago
@mitsky Its another one of those things that makes no sense isn't it. Someone was saying in another thread that we need a harder driving test. I don't think we do. Everyone who has passed in the last 20 years has done a test that is more than happy to fail you for behaviour that 90% of drivers exhibit every time they get behind the wheel. The test is fine. The fact that getting your license seems to be considered some weird proof that you will continue to drive safely is the issue. The fact that when you prove that you cannot drive safely its not immediately revoked is the issue.
mctrials23 53 minutes ago
@Rendel Harris The issue with GPS chips, as everyone who has one of those black boxes will attest to, is that they are crap. They interpret heavy braking as poor driving rather than someone else forcing it. They see rapid acceleration where there is none. All we need is a much higher chance of people being caught and punished for their everyday shit driving. I'm sure as a cyclist that every single time you go out on your bike you will have a dozen or more times when you think "that would have been a nasty accident if someone was coming the other direction". Eventually, when bad behaviour suffers no consequences it becomes completely normalised. Then we struggle to treat it as anything but a normal, unavoidable accident when that bad behaviour does incur consequences.
mctrials23 57 minutes ago
Drivers regularly pull out in front of me and cause me to slam on the brakes or avoid them. Very often they have seen me and just assume I'm not going very fast or they assume I will slow down/stop (which I do). Too many drivers don't look for cyclists, hate giving way to them or expect the cyclist to be moving slowly and just pull out.
mctrials23 1 hour ago
@Rendel Harris By the time someone is looking at prison time its too late. As has been proven time and time again, the severity of punishment is a poor deterrent to bad behaviour if people don't think its going to happen to them or they don't think they will be caught. Now I do think that there should be far more severe and immediate punishments for bad driving when drivers are caught but this would need to be coupled with a massive push to actually act on information/proof of bad driving. As anyone that submits footage to the police knows, its a crapshoot and certain police forces are anti-cyclist. This would try to essentially put people off misbehaving whilst driving before they cause an accident rather than getting the tired old excuse of "it was a single dangerous incident, they definitely don't do this all the time and their luck finally ran out". Perhaps it should go even further and if you have a history of speeding and you hurt someone speeding, that is looked upon in a very dim light.
KiwiMike 2 hours ago
Can we talk about “Washing up liquid contains a lot of salt – not a great idea to use a corrosive substance on a bicycle”? This is an urban myth. I have washed all of our many bikes using Fairy liquid or Ecover for decades. I’ve never found any evidence of corrosion, paint, laquer or decal wear, or any sign of anything. I regularly service forks and bearings, swapping a lot of gear, and everything has always been fine. Here’s far too much info below - long story short, Fairy liquid in 5L of hot water has a borderline-homeopathic amount of salt, it’s fine to use on a bike. ============ The honest answer is that neither Fairy nor Ecover publicly disclose the actual sodium chloride concentration in the consumer products I could find. The safety data sheets list hazardous ingredients above reporting thresholds, but sodium chloride is not reported for either product. However, we can put some realistic bounds on it. Fairy Original The SDS lists: Sodium laureth sulfate: 20-30% Lauramine oxide: 5-10% Alcohol: 1-5% No sodium chloride is declared. 15 In detergent formulations, sodium chloride is commonly used as a viscosity modifier (thickener) and is typically present at around 0.5-3%, sometimes lower. The absence of declaration suggests it is either not present or present at a low concentration that does not require reporting. This range is an informed formulation estimate, not a value stated by Fairy. Ecover The Ecover ingredient information lists: Sodium lauryl sulfate Lauryl glucoside Cocamidopropyl betaine Alcohol Lactic acid Sodium octyl sulphate Again, no sodium chloride is listed. Ecover's formulations tend to rely more heavily on plant-derived surfactants and may use little or no salt for thickening, but I could not find a published concentration. 63 What does this mean for bike washing? Let's assume a worst-case 3% salt content in Fairy. If you add: 10 mL Fairy to a 5-litre bucket Then salt introduced would be approximately: 10 mL × 3% ≈ 0.3 g salt Distributed through 5 L water ≈ 60 mg/L salt For comparison: Typical seawater: ~35,000 mg/L Lightly salted winter road spray: often hundreds to thousands of mg/L The wash bucket above: ~60 mg/L So even under a pessimistic assumption, the salt concentration is hundreds to thousands of times lower than the salt exposure your bike gets from winter roads. From a corrosion perspective, the quantity of salt introduced by washing-up liquid is essentially negligible compared with: Riding on salted roads Coastal spray Leaving winter grime on the bike Therefore my practical conclusion remains: ✅ Fairy or Ecover in a wash bucket is extremely unlikely to contribute any measurable corrosion risk. ✅ The important thing is rinsing and drying afterwards. ✅ Winter road salt is the real enemy, not washing-up liquid.
mitsky 2 hours ago
Another example of a driver's actions that would have been a straight fail in a driving test but is barely likely to lead to a disqualification... I'm wondering if having a driving licence is like a "Get out of jail free" card...
Sheen wheels 2 hours ago
Yes indeed. I have a version of the R8100 and you definitively need ceramic for the socket.
mctrials23 2 hours ago
@perce I'm not sure I agree with that. I think thats just confirming that he is take fully responsibility and recognises that the cyclist could have done nothing to mitigate it.
Paul J 2 hours ago
If we don't fight it now, we'll all end up forced to wear baggy shorts!
20 thoughts on “Live blog: Adam Yates misses Tirreno-Adriatico win by less than a second, Ineos accused of “greenwashing” over Team Sky deal, Bike shop assistant ‘mansplains’ clipless pedals to Olympic cyclist + more”
Mansplaining or just giving
Mansplaining or just giving advice which he’ll probably give regardless of gender (rightly or wrongly)
And she’s a bit up her own arse to instantly come out with the Olympian bollox. How about “no I’m an experienced cyclist and know what i want. Thanks anyway” or something less arsey?
StoopidUserName wrote:
It would be sexist if the bloke didn’t give out unsolicited patronising advice to both sexes.
IME as a man shopping in a bike shop, this is not the case…..
I have clipless pedals on my
I have clipless pedals on my commuter … is that why I didn’t go to the Olympics?
Can I have the Canyon Grail
Can I have the Canyon Grail in my favourite colour, which is red – no, blue.
typical pros, instead of
typical pros, instead of simply getting off and walking, they try to kill themselves on the bike, same thing happened in the Tour Britaain in the Lake District a couple of years ago, instead of simply walking at 3mph most were struggling at less than that on the bikes and as it was piddling it down it they were obviously losing traction anyways.
Police admit that car was in collision with cyclist intead of motorist but no arrests made, how very typical of the MET!
Genuine question, why would
Double post
Genuine question, why would
Genuine question, why would someone go for cages over clipless? Reading the twitter feed it’s almost like some people don’t know SPDs exist. Lots of talk about silly shoes and wanting to walk. I can’t think of any reason to use cages over SPDs, unless you expect to change footwear a lot, which is quite a small use case and reasonable for someone in a shop to assume that someone buying cages might want some advice. It seems more like arrogant elite athlete (something I have been on the receiving end of, both from athletes and other high achievers, for example academics) than mansplaning.
I get the reason some people use flats (as I do on some bikes) but I genuinely can’t see why 99.99% of people would go for cages over flats or SPDs. I’d be interested to know if there is an objective reason. Cages seem downright dangerous on a commute, where you stop and start all the time and are in traffic.
John Smith wrote:
It works for her which is all that matters but for most, I’d have thought either flat pedals or spds would be more appropriate….which is why I think the minimum wage shop assistant was at least half right.
Not read the social media posts on this so maybe I’m misreading something?
StoopidUserName wrote:
Genuine question, why would someone go for cages over clipless? Reading the twitter feed it’s almost like some people don’t know SPDs exist. Lots of talk about silly shoes and wanting to walk. I can’t think of any reason to use cages over SPDs, unless you expect to change footwear a lot, which is quite a small use case and reasonable for someone in a shop to assume that someone buying cages might want some advice. It seems more like arrogant elite athlete (something I have been on the receiving end of, both from athletes and other high achievers, for example academics) than mansplaning.
I get the reason some people use flats (as I do on some bikes) but I genuinely can’t see why 99.99% of people would go for cages over flats or SPDs. I’d be interested to know if there is an objective reason. Cages seem downright dangerous on a commute, where you stop and start all the time and are in traffic.
— StoopidUserName It works for her which is all that matters but for most, I’d have thought either flat pedals or spds would be more appropriate….which is why I think the minimum wage shop assistant was at least half right. Not read the social media posts on this so maybe I’m misreading something?— John Smith
Which is fine, people can use what they want, but there is no reason for her on anyone else to be a dick when a shop assistant assumes that you might want to be pointed to an objectively better choice. All she had to do was say “no thank you. I have tried clipless and prefer cages” rather than spouting off about being an Olympic athlete and claiming he was being sexist.
So you can ride into the
So you can ride into the office in your work shoes? So you don’t rip your hosiery or shins on the studs on flats?
Drinfinity wrote:
I just leave my work shoes at work. Problem solved
Wouldn’t cages ruin any
Wouldn’t cages ruin any decent shoes if they were done up properly? And wouldn’t cages catch on hosiery just as much as flats (assuming that your not comparing to sharply studded MTB flats)?
For town I doubt the cages
For town I doubt the cages are strapped down to track tightness, they would be fine on a good brogue, and yes I was thinking of MTB flats with shin-eating studs on.
Drinfinity wrote:
If your not going to do them up tight then surely there’s no point in them over flats?
John Smith wrote:
“Cages”? I presume that this is youth-speak for toe-clips? Y’know, it’s the reason why you call modern pedals clipless even though your cleats are clipped in?
@John Smith: Riding with loose toe straps allows you to get a foot down quickly yet stops you slipping off the pedal when honking.
I’ve received a similar
I’ve received a similar comment about the merits of SPD vs flats and cages at the LBS. No proof that was mansplaining, and I didn’t see the Olympian allege it, but I guess scare quoting mansplaining gets more hits. If anything it looks like pomposity over being an Olympian…
Right, well, I guess all of
Right, well, I guess all of you having woodies over spuds can nip over to Mara’s feed and let her know then..
When I first used pedals with
I’m not sure. When I first used pedals with clips and toe straps they were sometimes referred to as ‘rat traps’. Reading this story I assumed ‘pedals with cages’ just meant ‘caged pedals’ rather than those with toe clips. Halfords would appear to agree, but dunno really…
https://www.halfords.com/cycling/bike-parts/pedals-pegs/halfords-caged-alloy-bike-pedals
Surely an Olympian expert
Surely an Olympian expert would know not to pedal through corners and take chunks out of their cage pedals?
Butty wrote:
Of course not. Every half decent racing cyclist has an urge to push things a bit; thats what racing is about. If you can pedal through a corner (or anywhere else) it is quicker than freewheeling and as long as you don’t bash it hard enough to bounce a wheel and lose traction it is no big deal. Before everyone moved to clipless pedals (which generally have more ground clearence and thus allow more pedalling through corners) any half decent road racing cyclist would have taken chunks out of their pedals on corners. A look around the bikes ridden by the pros in town centre crits revealed that they were pretty heavily used and most would have pdeal scrapes from hard cornering.
Some bike shops stocked extra left side Campag end caps because dragging the left one on the ground could cause it to unscrew and lots were lost that way.